Sarah Anne Carter

Boxes of Knowledge: Objects in Systems

What kinds of lessons can be packed into boxes? In “Boxes of Knowledge: Objects in Systems” I argue that carefully structured teaching boxes were used to naturalize abstract ideas as observable qualities of the material world. My case studies stretch from the 1840s through the 1940s and explore sensory knowledge, natural and cultural knowledge, commercial knowledge, and domestic science and medical knowledge. Taken together this work proposes teaching boxes as places to hold and develop abstract ideas, materializing knowledge through the relationships among things and students’ embodied engagement with those things.

Sarah Anne Carter, Ph.D. is Associate Professor and the Chipstone Foundation Design and Material Culture Chair in Design Studies, and the Executive Director of the Nancy M. Bruce Center for Design and Material Culture in the School of Human Ecology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She teaches courses on design history, the material culture of childhood, and material culture theory and methods in Design Studies and is also an affiliate in the Art History Department.

She is currently completing the co-edited the book “Material Histories of Home Economics: Bodies, Homes, and Networks” with Marina Moskowitz and is working on a new book, “Boxes of Knowledge: Objects in Systems,” the focus of her research at the IRH. This work, along with projects on the “Practice Cottage” at UW and a history of museum experiences, explores connections between material culture and intellectual history. Her previous books include, Object Lessons: How Nineteenth-Century Americans Learned to Make Sense of the Material World and the co-edited Oxford Handbook of History and Material Culture.  Prior to joining the School of Human Ecology in 2019, Prof. Carter served as Curator and Director of Research of the Chipstone Foundation in Milwaukee, WI. She maintains an active curatorial practice.